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Sign up todayOccupied City
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On January 26, 1948, a public health official arrives at a branch of the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo. There has been an outbreak of dysentery in the neighborhood, he tells the manager, and he has been assigned by Occupation authorities to treat all locals who might have been exposed.
The sixteen members of the staff gather as the official pours the first of two separate medicines into sixteen cups and instructs them in how exactly to drink it. Within five minutes, ten employees are dead and the official has fled. But the horrific crime is merely the catalyst for this blistering novel.
In twelve different voices—each telling the story of the murder from a singular perspective—the narrative gathers staggering power and pathos. We hear one of the victims speak from the grave. We read the increasingly mad notes of one of the case detectives, the desperate letters of an American occupier, and the testimony of a traumatized survivor. We meet a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, a man who calls himself “The Occult Detective,” a Soviet soldier, and a well-known painter accused and convicted of the crime. Every voice enlarges and deepens the portrait of a people making their way out of a war-induced hell. Wittingly or unwittingly, each one of them plays a part in blurring the line between truth and lies: in their own lives, in the life of their city, their history, their nation, the newly emerging postwar world.
A stunningly audacious work of fiction, Occupied City envelops the reader in its extreme time and place with its brilliantly idiosyncratic, expressionistic, and mesmerizing narrative.
David Peace was born and raised in Yorkshire, England. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty, and Nineteen Eighty-Three); GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction; The Damned Utd; Red or Dead, which was short-listed for the Goldsmiths Prize; and Patient X. Tokyo Redux is the final part of his Tokyo Trilogy, following Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City. He lives in Tokyo.
Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She has appeared on stage and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.
Bronson Pinchot, an Audie Award–winning narrator and Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, received his education at Yale University. He restores Greek Revival buildings and appears in television, film, and on stage whenever the pilasters and entablatures overwhelm him.
Lorna Raver, named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of the Year, has received numerous Audie Award nominations and many AudioFile Earphones Awards. She has appeared on stage in New York, Los Angeles, and regional theaters around the country. Among her many television credits are NYPD Blue, Judging Amy, Boston Legal, ER, and Star Trek. She starred in director Sam Raimi’s film Drag Me to Hell.
Alton Takiyama-Chung is a professional storyteller with a passion for Asian folktales and Hawaiian legends. In 2005, he was awarded the first JJ Reneaux Emerging Artist Award by the National Storytelling Network. He currently resides in Vancouver, Washington, and is the technical director of a small theater company in Portland, Oregon.
Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices. Stefan’s early singing career included choral and solo concerts at Carnegie Hall, Judson Hall, and Lincoln Center.
Reviews
“This is a savagely beautiful, richly startling novel…The raw beauty of Peace’s language envelops you…He is an astonishing storyteller.”
“The novels Peace produces are uncommonly serious about the nature of the tissues that bind together history, rumour, politics, psychology, community and fiction.”
“A marvellous book.”
“Undoubtedly one of the best British novelists working today.”
“Occupied City is an extraordinary and highly original crime novel…This is a truly remarkable work. It is hugely daring, utterly irresistible, deeply serious and unlike anything I have ever read.”
“Like the novels of Stieg Larsson, Peace’s books are fueled by political passion…Occupied City [is] genuinely hypnotic…Peace’s incantations seem to me to achieve exactly the kind of urgency and intensity he is aiming for…It’s no wonder that several critics have compared its mood to Eliot’s The Waste Land.”
“Peace’s breathtaking skill renders all [the voices] vividly, forcefully alive…His pulp-modernist style feels honed and refined to scalpel-sharp efficiency…Peace is like a fearsome tornado turning the world on its head.”
“Hypnotic postmodern noir of almost unrivaled fury…Expect to be enthralled and maybe amazed…Peace, a gifted fictional ventriloquist, takes us inside the mental extremities of characters…Hardly any writer can invoke T. S. Eliot and ‘The Waste Land’ and expect to get away with it, but Peace does. He’s an original and ambitious writer. [Occupied City] takes no prisoners.”
“A genre-busting mystery and meditation on the ambiguity of elusive reality…Peace writes with boatloads of style…The most compelling character is Tokyo itself, a ruined city in a ruined country, a place of shadows and lies that feels not unlike Vienna in ‘The Third Man’ or wartime Europe in Alan Furst’s novels. This backdrop shows how deliberate, bold, and deadly serious Peace is.”
“A tour de force…In Rashômon fashion, a number of disparate characters offer dramatically different perspectives on a horrific crime that claims 12 lives…Peace humanizes his characters and provides subtle insights into how they interpret the facts of the mass murder. This literary thriller will more than satisfy readers with a taste for ambiguity.”
“The multiple narrators help sort out the many points of view Peace uses to tell his story. The novel bogs down at points, but the first-rate reading makes this an audiobook experience that improves on the text.”
“Maintain[s] the fast pace of a historical thriller…This original amalgam of storytelling, history, and style compares to Haruki Murakami in its content and scope but challenges the reader to unravel the mystery in 12 distinct voices.”
“Occupied City is a stunning—and stunningly challenging—novel, a product of extensive historical research, remarkable imagination, and deep insight. It is certainly among the best books of the new year.”
“Powerful and ambitious…Peace [is] immensely talented.”
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